


first things first

by Spencer_Grey



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:40:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26713861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spencer_Grey/pseuds/Spencer_Grey
Summary: Reggie is the first to go, Alex remembers it with startling clarity.
Relationships: Alex & Luke Patterson & Reggie (Julie and The Phantoms)
Comments: 75
Kudos: 545





	first things first

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this in an hour at 2am so excuse any shittiness. I became possessed with an idea and couldn't rest until I got it out, have fun with it.

Reggie is the first to go, Alex remembers it with startling clarity. 

They’re cramped in the back of the ambulance, only one because there are more important things happening than the three of them, barely breathing through the twisting pain in their guts and their lungs simply refusing to function. 

The paramedics are jumping between them, trying to stabilise the boys with a sense of urgency and care Alex forgot he was once used to. 

He looks over, seeing Luke’s eyes staring back at him, misty and afraid — Luke didn’t _know_ fear, could never understand the useless emotion, he would say, but he’s lying there between his best friends and he is terrified. Still, he offers a weak smile to Alex, always the first to comfort him, the first to swallow whatever turbulence is in his head to reassure, to _lead_ as he always will. 

Alex can’t smile back. Everything hurts and the paramedics are shouting something he can’t make out. He peers over Luke, hoping for the same sight from Reggie. 

All he receives is the empty, dull gaze of a corpse. 

Reggie, like a ball of energy that never runs dry, the first with a joke, a stupid comment, a hug, whatever he needed for the moment, he had and was willing to give in amplitude. The kindest of them, the  _ smartest _ of them, somehow, his Reggie, lays still. His last breath escaping his purple lips, and his glassy eyes linger on the back of Luke’s head. 

No one was even  _ looking  _ at him when he died. 

There’s a paramedic on his chest, attempting to do CPR but all it achieves is making his lifeless body flop, jerking about. 

There’s more yelling, and Alex thinks one of the voices is Luke’s, crying for his friend, but Alex can barely see anything through his blurred vision, tears streaming down his cheeks despite the pain that’s assaulting his body. 

Luke looks back at him again, an understanding, a  _ vow _ passing silently between them.  _ Together _ . 

Alex swallows tightly — he hadn’t imagined he’d go this way. He’d thought he’d have a few more years, at least. Maybe, if he was lucky he would’ve died surrounded by his family, a husband, if that was ever allowed, some children. 

But, as Luke’s blinks start to last a moment too long, Alex throws that idea out from his mind. 

It was always meant to be like this, wasn’t it? 

The three of them, together, and he  _ is _ surrounded by family. 

Blindly, Alex reaches out, sweat soaked hand finding sweat soaked hand, and Luke’s eyes open slowly. He’ll always love those eyes, kind and gentle and warm, the eyes that know him inside and out, and loves him anyway. 

Luke’s lips move as though he’s trying to speak but nothing more than a groaned mumble comes out — and all those stolen kisses they shared would do nothing to bring him back. 

Alex nods. He knows. 

Perhaps it’s a blessing that Alex doesn’t see those eyes again, Luke having the piece of mind to shut them before he goes, like drifting off to sleep. Alex hopes it’s just as peaceful. 

And he’s left. The paramedics give up on Reggie, his face a sickly pale now, eyes shut from an external source, and now it’s Luke turn to be a part of a desperate fight for survival — a doomed one from the beginning. 

There’s no saving them. Alex accepts that with a strange detached sense of easiness. He can think of worse ways to go. 

He doesn’t look away, doesn’t close his eyes, wanting the last thing he sees to be his best friends, his brothers. Alex takes a deep breath, his final, and doesn’t fight the numbness overtaking his body. He’s so,  _ so _ tired. 

It’s almost comforting, in a way. 

He just hopes, as he fades into oblivion, that he won’t be alone on the other side of it, that he’ll get to see Luke and Reggie again. 

Alex dies alone but not alone. It doesn’t hurt anymore. 

—

Floating out of the ambulance was the most relaxed Alex has ever been, like laying on a cloud, like he’d never known pain in his life. He keeps flying up until, maneuvered by some force, he’s standing atop the ambulance, sirens screaming as it tears through the streets. 

Luke and Reggie are there, legs dangling over the side, the weight of this seemingly lost on them. 

Reggie looks over his shoulder at Alex, his face full of life and colour, eyes certainly not empty, and he smiles — something playful and knowing and warm. 

“Took your time,” he says, patting the empty space beside him. 

Alex moves, feeling more like a semi present viewer to his own body, and settles next to Reggie. 

“So, boys,” Luke says, tipping his head back to watch the distant stars and streetlights rolling by, “what do you think death has in store for us?” 

They’re so casual about it, about their literal dying, that it’s contagious, and Alex, for once, doesn’t have a single thought. 

“Whatever it is,” he says, taking a breath of the crisp air, it feels strange without working lungs, “we’ll deal with it together.” 

—

The dark room is cold, it’s empty and liminal and everything that makes Alex’s anxiety go haywire, because of course, not even in death can he truly escape it. 

There’s no light source and yet he can make out Luke and Reggie, each staggering about as they struggle to find their footing in the expanse. 

Alex walks until he slams into something solid, and follows the wall until he makes a circuit. It’s maddening but he keeps walking, finger trailing on the wall even as the other two bicker amongst themselves. 

Whatever this is, whatever Hell they’ve appeared into, Alex knows that the moment he stops, he’ll break, shatter completely from the sheer insanity of it all. 

He cries anyway, of course, empty tears dripping onto the non-existent floor, dampening it if it were real — which Alex is sure it’s not. Just some illusion. 

This isn’t the afterlife. It can’t be. 

—

It isn’t. Julie and the Phantoms is. It’s everything he could’ve hoped for and more. 

Reggie was the first to go, unseen and silent, and for that, he gets to perform, gets to be loud and known. Luke couldn’t form his last words, so now he can sing until his voice wears out. Alex died alone but now, he has eternity with his brothers, and he will never know that feeling again.

  
  
  



End file.
